It adds insult to injury to be told essentially “fall in line behind the dirty energy industry’s climate agenda or you are sacrificing the perfect for the good.”

I reject this dichotomy of “you are either for progress on stopping climate change [and will support the climate bill no matter how awful it is] or against it [because you break the silence and raise wholly legitimate doubts in public about whether the climate bill will accomplish anything useful or promote a just climate future]“.

This is the dichotomy given to us by this rather profane alliance of big greens and big polluters: this climate bill is a joke and if we don’t use it as an opportunity to educate the public about the issues (carbon permit give-a-ways, carbon offsets, environmental justice, grandfathering in the coal industry) that you say they don’t care about — crucial and fundamental issues to a just livable climate future – than frankly we might as well just give up on that goal: when else are we to talk about these fundamental problems in the USCAP model if not now while it has some attention?? If not now, when?

Let’s give “the public” the benefit of the doubt that they can understand these things over time, that’s it better to do the right thing then to do the wrong thing quickly, and (pardon the language) call bullshit by name, rather than pinching our nose while we and the rest of the world eats it.

1. Will this bill be good for the economy?
2. Why should we combat global warming right now with a bill?
3. Will this help us get off foreign oil?

Yes I’m generalizing, but like I said, if green groups/activists want to eat each other for lunch behind closed doors on the policy specifics, be my guest. In public, you’ve got the delay/denial messaging machine repeating simple lies, and the message from the pro-climate activists is all over the place.

The problem with coming up with a unified messaging is that the discourse is completely and utterly dominated by a few big players (the big greens) who are willing to compromise (both in messaging and lobbying) or even actively promote everything the youth climate movement has come out against: from giving up on 100% auctions to carbon offsets to ditching environmental justice stipulations to grandfathering in the coal industry.

The big greens NGOs have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying for this bill – more than on anything in decades – not to mention many tens of thousands on the media work to promote it as the best thing since sliced bread. The big greens are so invested in it’s passage they can’t be trusted to do be honest dealers with the rest of the environmental movement in any of things you listed above.

As such, the only truly unified message we can possible have is that of the of USCAP (www.us-cap.org), the Oil / Coal / Gas / big “green” ngo joint lobby group which basically wrote the blueprint for this bill.

I’m sorry to say it, but every piece of evidence from their work on the bill in the House is that NRDC, NWF, WRI, and EDF are far more invested in the health of the USCAP coalition – in their alliance with the dirty energy industry in other words – than they are in unity with those of us concerned about equity, the pitfalls of the carbon market and non-solutions like nuclear power, and stopping coal in it’s tracks.

Face it: we aren’t going to have unity with USCAP.

Our option is to combat the hegemony of these groups work on this bill at every turn or to forget about this battle – which USCAP has one – and move on to future fights.

I agree we shouldn’t pray Obama will swoop in and save the say(that’s why I wouldn’t bet my life on waiting for the EPA to regulate CO2), but a big bill requires a big push by the president. It’s not the silver bullet, but if you don’t have Obama out in front you’re in trouble.

Over the past few decades, contrary to #7 here, green groups haven’t spent decades trying to figure this out. They have spent decades trying to milk money out of grassroots environmentalists to pay for their expensive lobbying and policy jobs in DC. If the only infrastructure you’ve built is in DC then there is no way to “go out and make them do it” because people in DC don’t vote. If the big green groups spent a majority of their money on genuine organizing to build a popular movement around this issue then we might have a chance of strengthening it in the Senate.

Until then we’ll have to keep doing what we’ve been doing – praying that the Obama-god will swoop in at the last minute and save the day. Talk about faith based programs, that’s not a strategy at all.